[Peace-discuss] Alea iacta est

[John W.]

On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 12:01 PM, Laurie Solomon <ls1000 at live.com> wrote:



> Good, I am glad we have gotten the meaning and derivation of those terms
> out of the way.  It was informative even if the terms themselves are hardly
> seen or heard these days since most of today's population tend to be much
> more direct than persons of earlier generations.  Now we need to determine
> how those terms moved from references to asses to genitals (male or female)
> or genitals to asses.  Kissing a horse's ass or even patting it is certainly
> different from kissing or patting a horse's genitals (there are different
> parts of the anatomy or are they?) and a horse is not only a different
> species than a human; but in my humble opinion, a far better and preferred
> species.  Since "sucking up to" or "kissing the ass of" one's superiors and
> even one's equals - literally or figuratively - has become a way of life in
> the highly bureaucratized world today where no one is ever sure who is in
> charge now or will be in the future and whose ass to kiss or who to suck up
> to so as to cover one's own ass, we have all become "Bozos on this bus."
> Some like Petraeus are better at it than others or more creative at it than
> others; but I would not rule out that people like Admiral William Fallon
> have not done their share of ass kissing or genital sucking to get where
> they are.
>
> The point of this is to note that in today's world no one gets to positions
> of authority and power, influence and control, or officialdom and wealth
> without being a good game player, who is playing at the top of their game.
> Thus, the meek shall not inherit the earth; they will only inherit the dirt.
> Those who do inherit the earth (why they would want to I will never know)
> are going to be those who are savvy, intelligent, and shrewd players who no
> one should ever trust - but whom the masses tend, in a fit of false
> consciousness, to believe, trust, and follow rather than think and do for
> themselves.  Finding a proper name to use to label and describe those
> players and discussing the derivation of said terms tends to become another
> distraction and misdirection away from the substance of the problem.  Are we
> engaging in such distractions and misdirection because we refuse to bracket
> the realities of today's world so as to call those realities into question
> and treat the existence and survival of those realities as problematic in
> order to counterfactually propose alternative groundings for our views of
> other possibilities?


Yes, probably.




> Can there be a different set of presuppositions for grounding our world
> which enables the possibility of organizing and structuring it in a way so
> as to make ass kissing and sucking up an impossibility - or at least a
> negatively sanctioned reality?
>
No, there can't.




> --------------------------------------------------
> From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at illinois.edu>
> Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2010 11:19 AM
> To: "E.Wayne Johnson" <ewj at pigs.ag>
> Cc: "peace discuss" <Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Alea iacta est
>
> Cast or oil seems to be the alternative, and the Obamans seem all too
>> willing to throw the dice, regardless of whom they crush.
>>
>> "Pamapi" is a keeper, given the usual recipients of sycophancy - a strange
>> & interesting word in itself.
>>
>> "Pudenda" in Latin is mostly post-classical and referred primarily to male
>> genitals - but in Victorian English applies mainly to female genitals and
>> seems unavoidably misogynistic.
>>
>> "Psychophant" (from David Johnson) of course means a particularly deranged
>> ass-kissing chicken-shit.
>>
>>
>> On 5/26/10 9:22 AM, E.Wayne Johnson wrote:
>>
>>> It's a hoot. and it has an outcast like me shaken, and casting about for
>>> something aleatoric to roll out.
>>>
>>> I am not sure if I mentioned it in this forum before or not... but
>>> "sycophant" literally means to display a fig [sukon], and figuratively
>>> speaking the fig represents "the female pudendum" as the American
>>> Heritage
>>> dictionary puts it.
>>>
>>> Ass-kissing chicken-shit is the bowderized version of sycophant, sort of.
>>>
>>> * BTW, the common term for sycophant in Chinese is "pamapi" which means
>>> to
>>> "Pat the Horse's Ass".
>>>
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "C. G. Estabrook" <
>>> galliher at illinois.edu>
>>> To: "peace discuss" <Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> Sent: Wednesday,
>>> May
>>> 26, 2010 12:09 PM Subject: [Peace-discuss] Alea iacta est
>>>
>>>
>>> David Petraeus Announces for President After All Submitted by
>>> davidswanson on
>>> Wed, 2010-05-26 http://asskissinglittlechickenshit.com
>>>
>>> My name is General David Petraeus and I want to be your Commander in
>>> Chief
>>> because I admire everything about you, especially that amazing and unique
>>> way you have about you.
>>>
>>> Here's a little background on who I am, just a few highlights that I know
>>> you will be able to appreciate.
>>>
>>> In 2007, Gareth Porter reported:
>>>
>>> "In sharp contrast to the lionisation of Gen. David Petraeus by members
>>> of
>>> the U.S. Congress during his testimony this week, Petraeus's superior,
>>> Admiral William Fallon, chief of the Central Command (CENTCOM), derided
>>> Petraeus as a sycophant during their first meeting in Baghdad last March,
>>> according to Pentagon sources familiar with reports of the meeting.
>>>
>>> "Fallon told Petraeus that he considered him to be 'an ass-kissing little
>>> chickenshit' and added, 'I hate people like that', the sources say. That
>>> remark reportedly came after Petraeus began the meeting by making remarks
>>> that Fallon interpreted as trying to ingratiate himself with a superior."
>>>
>>> Fallon's problem was actually that he didn't want to escalate the war in
>>> Iraq, and I did. He lost, and I won. Well, the people who died lost too,
>>> but
>>> you know what I mean. We put more blood on the ground in Iraq, and
>>> through a
>>> combination of utter devastation, displacement, segregation, bribery,
>>> corruption, withdrawal, and promises to leave, we were able to pretend
>>> that
>>> wars of occupation are ended by escalating them. This is paying off BIG
>>> TIME
>>>  right now in Afghanistan.
>>>
>>> We all know Afghanistan can't be won except by withdrawal, but we're
>>> going
>>> to escalate. The counterinsurgency manual that I pretend I wrote says we
>>> need
>>> to put 80% of our effort into civilian solutions. We're going with 3%
>>> instead, as a compromise with real world conditions on the ground, such
>>> as
>>> the fact that they're all a bunch of Muslim Arabs or some such thing!
>>>
>>> And, because you idiots think we have a peace prize winner in charge now,
>>> I'm expanding our efforts with death squads into a number of neighboring
>>> nations, including Iran, which is going to be the real big one, I mean
>>> really
>>>  really, I mean my mouth starts watering at the thought of how much blood
>>> is
>>> going to flow, I can just feel the taste of it bubbling down my throat, I
>>> . .
>>> . I . . .ahem, I mean to say, the New York Times has given credit where
>>> it's
>>> due:
>>>
>>> "The secret directive, signed in September by Gen. David H. Petraeus,
>>> authorizes the sending of American Special Operations troops to both
>>> friendly
>>> and hostile nations in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Horn of
>>> Africa
>>> to gather intelligence and build ties with local forces. Officials said
>>> the
>>> order also permits reconnaissance that could pave the way for possible
>>> military strikes in Iran if tensions over its nuclear ambitions escalate.
>>> While the Bush administration had approved some clandestine military
>>> activities far from designated war zones, the new order is intended to
>>> make
>>> such efforts more systematic and long term, officials said."
>>>
>>> Damn straight. And it's got the hippies running scared. Here's Robert
>>> Dreyfuss in the Nation:
>>>
>>> "If President Obama knew about this, authorized it, and still supports
>>> it,
>>> then Obama has crossed a red line, and the president will stand revealed
>>> as
>>> an aggressive, militaristic liberal interventionist who bears a closer
>>> resemblance to the president he succeeded than to the ephemeral reformer
>>> that
>>> he pretended to be in 2008, when he ran for office. If he didn’t know, if
>>> he
>>> didn’t understand the order, and if he’s unwilling to cancel it now that
>>> it’s
>>> been publicized, then Obama is a feckless incompetent. Take your pick. If
>>> Congress has any guts at all, it will convene immediate investigative
>>> hearings into a power grab by Petraeus, a politically ambitious general,
>>> and
>>> the Pentagon’s arrogant Special Operations team, led by Admiral Eric T.
>>> Olson, who collaborated with Petraeus. And Congress needs to ask the
>>> White
>>> House: what did you know, and when did you know it?"
>>>
>>> My favorite bit is "If Congress has any guts." Let me let you in on a
>>> little
>>> secret. I've been to testify in Congress, and those clowns mostly beat up
>>> on
>>> each other and kissed my ass. I testified there in September, 2007, for
>>> example, and toward the end of the hearing Rep. Brad Sherman asked me
>>> what I
>>> would do if Congress ended funding for the occupation of Iraq and Bush
>>> ordered me to continue with it anyway. I told that chump I would have to
>>> ask
>>> my lawyer, and he let it go. Ha! And people think there's a legislative
>>> branch of government running things. Come on! I tell them what to think
>>> before the hearings!
>>>
>>> I even tell them things they will never remember when I tell them the
>>> opposite and show them how the new story will protect them from the
>>> heathen
>>> hordes. Like when I told them I would never run for office. James Madison
>>> said, "If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the
>>> guise
>>> of fighting a foreign enemy." It's here, children, and you are going to
>>> love
>>> it!
>>>
>>> ###
>>
>>

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